


Same Old World

by Nihilistic_Janitor



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25269196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihilistic_Janitor/pseuds/Nihilistic_Janitor
Summary: In which Emma tries to track down an old friend to apologize.Note: this is an old fic i'm reuploading, don't expect any more updates.
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

Lily squeezed Sabah's hand under the table. She knew Sabah had put the game behind her, but her own fond memories of it were still fresh. It would be amazing if she could convince Sabah that it was a good idea to get the Hive back together to take on a new MMO. So she'd set up this little meeting, telling Sabah that maybe seeing the old guildmaster again would get her more excited about it.  
  
She hadn't quite told Sabah that she was also worried for Taylor. Lily never thought that Taylor would have hung on quite so tightly to Yggdrasil, but when she'd gotten that email asking to share the end of the world together, she couldn't say no. Taylor had sounded so _tired._ So _desperate._ Sarah, of course, had picked up on it, too, but that dickwaffle Calvert was working her to the bone, and she didn't have the time to do anything about it.  
  
So she'd invited Taylor to come and have some lunch with her and Sabah. Just to check up on her, make sure she was doing alright.  
  
There had been offline meetings before, so she knew what Taylor looked like. The girl was thin and pale, and even then, she'd looked tired. But that was nothing compared to the wraith that was slouching her way up to their table. Sabah gave a small gasp at just how bad Taylor looked.  
  
She looked frayed, and sad, and folded in on herself. Lily would be surprised if she'd eaten or slept at all this week. Her clothes were rumpled, the hair she'd been so proud of was frazzled and dirty. She'd spent how many thousands of gold trying to give her avatar the very same hair, and now it had gone to hell.  
  
She didn't so much sit in the seat across from Lily as collapse.  
  
The conversation was stilted, awkward. Taylor gave small talk a shot, but it was quiet and unenthusiastic, and Lily couldn't quite bring herself to ask any real questions. Sabah was as off-put as she was, but she at least gave the conversation a sporting chance by talking about her latest fashion designs.  
  
Lily was getting really worried. She needed something to cheer up her distraught former guildmaster, but nothing was working. Then, a godsend. She noticed, passing by outside, a friend of hers from college. Emma, social butterfly extraordinaire! If anyone could shake Taylor out of her funk, it was her. Plus, giving Taylor a new friend outside of her little gaming community would do her a world of good. Get her out of the crummy apartment she complained so much about a little more.  
  
Lily excused herself and ran to talk to Emma, who was only too happy to come by. The girl always seemed ready to cheer people up when they were down back in college, and Lily was glad to know that hadn't changed.  
  
Lily returned with the pretty redhead in tow, and introduced her to Sabah and Taylor.  
  
"Hey, so I saw someone I knew from college, and I figured she'd want to sit with us."  
  
Taylor's eyes stoically remained glued to her fries, even as Sabah looked up and gave a little wave.  
  
"This is my friend Emma." Lily gave a little smile.  
  
As soon as the name had left her lips, Taylor's head shot up, whirled around to look at Lily. She was wide-eyed, shocked. _What?_  
  
"E-Emma?" She croaked. She looked like she was about to cry.  
  
Emma looked confused. "Do you know me?" she asked, pleasantly.  
  
Taylor's eyes darted between Lily and Emma. _What was going on?_  
  
Then Taylor just bolted. Ran straight out of the restaurant. Lily was _sure_ she'd seen tears. Emma turned to her. "Was she okay? She looked like she was doing really badly."  
  
Lily sucked in a breath. "Yeah, that was the friend of mine I told you all those stories about. Skitter?"  
  
Emma chuckled. "Oh, the super shy girl who just so happened to also be a complete cold-hearted badass? How could I forget?"  
  
"Yeah, well, we were worried about her since the game ended. I saw you and thought you'd be able to help Taylor out some, but-" Lily stopped herself. Emma's eyes had widened in realization of something.  
  
"Taylor?" she whispered. "Taylor Hebert?"  
  
Lily still didn't understand what was going on. "Um, yeah. Did you know each other?"  
  
"I need to go." Without waiting for a response, Emma dashed out of the restaurant, chasing after Taylor.  
_  
What was that expression on her face?_


	2. Chapter 2

Emma ran along the street. Taylor. Taylor! She hadn’t talked to her in years, hadn’t thought about her in years, even. Her almost-sister, who she’d cast aside when high school came around.  
  
She’d even bullied her, a little, at first. Later on, she could barely even remember Taylor even being there. Did she stop going? Was she just invisible?  
  
She’d slowly come to see what she’d done, as time went on. College was a real eye-opener for Emma. Her friends there, Christy, Luke, Tai, they’d given her a better perspective on things. Even Sophia had mellowed out some. Time healed a lot of wounds.  
  
But despite that she’d known what she did was wrong, she just...ignored it. She never tried to reach out to Taylor, never tried to make things right. She acted better, sure. She tried to build people up in college, bring them out of their shells, give them a chance to be happy.  
  
Maybe she’d just assumed that Taylor had moved on, like she did. That she was off somewhere, maybe teaching, following in her mother’s footsteps.  
  
Emma had always known Taylor was strong, in a way. She could even remember why she began bullying her; to prove she was even stronger.  
  
Seeing Taylor like this? So broken?  
  
Something inside of her retched.  
  
She knew that it was her fault. She’d taken her friend, and she’d crushed her. That bubbly, happy girl who was always glad to see her, babbling excitedly about this and that. She’d cast her aside in the name of being strong, had broken her down until she had nothing better to do than hide and take it. Rumours of ages past floated through Emma’s memory. Rumours she’d started, even. Horrible, ugly things, cruel things.  
  
She thought about what Lily had told her.  
  
Not much, really. Emma had never had a whole lot of interest in video games, and Lily never did manage to convince her to join in. She barely recalled what Taylor had done. Vague somethings about being brutal?  
  
Like Emma had been when high school started? Not a good sign.  
  
Emma panted, her feet pounding against the sidewalk. She couldn’t even see Taylor, didn’t know where she went, she was just running now. She slowed to a stop, let her breathing lose its ragged edge.  
  
She had to apologize. She had to help. Make things right. They would probably never be friends again, not really, but she couldn’t just leave it at that. Leave Taylor alone and miserable and broken and...  
  
Taylor, hair streaming out in beautiful dark curls behind her, running along the beach in the light of the sunset. Laughter in the air. The parents a long way behind them, walking through the surf.  
  
Taylor, tears in the corners of her eyes from laughing too hard, glasses crooked, lying on the bright pink bedspread. It wasn’t even that funny!  
  
Taylor, dragged along behind her, trying to dig her heels into the sidewalk as they neared the store. Laughing even as she protested, even as they both knew she was going to give in.  
  
Taylor, leaning against her shoulder as she sobbed.  
  
Taylor, staring sightlessly at the tombstone.  
  
Taylor, coming back from camp, cheerful again.  
  
Taylor, smile slowly cracking.  
  
Taylor, downtrodden.  
  
Juice in her hair.  
  
Baggy clothes.  
  
Not looking at her.  
  
Stumbling.  
  
Tears.  
  
Gone.  
  


\---------------

  
Emma’s texting skills were rusty. She could remember a time when she could hold full conversations with Sophia in the time it took for Quinlan to glance over at the board. Now it took her whole minutes to put a message together.  
  
Maybe part of it was that she didn’t know Lily all that well anymore. She hadn’t seen much of her since college.  
  
Maybe part of it was just a general sense of overwhelming frustration. She’d lost Taylor on the street, and now this?  
  
sorry ems we dunno where she lives  
  
never cane up  
  
came  
  
and we tried an email but it looks like she killed the acc  
  
sarah might kno if you can get in touch but shes busy p much always  
  
ill text you her number  
  
uh  
  
okay other than us and her there were some other ppl who usually came to the offline meets  
  
colin ciara alan melanie aisha fortuna and fortunas mom  
  
ill give you there numbers too they might be able to help  
  
sabs got a fashion show in la were going to so were not gonna be in town but call if something happens and well be on the first flight back k  
  
Shit.  
  
One of them had to know, right?  
  
First thing’s first, though, it was possible Taylor hadn’t moved at all. She remembered, vaguely, her dad going to a funeral for Danny a few years ago. Maybe Taylor just lived in her old house, right where she always did? Emma wouldn’t have to do any crazy digging, she could just go and straighten this whole mess out and Taylor would forgive her- not forgive her but at least let her apologize- and her conscience would stop whining like a wounded puppy.  
  
Emma hopped into her shiny red sedan and started driving.  
  
Her house first, easy to get to, then a left two blocks up, her dad had driven her this way often enough that she could remember it even having never driven it herself, then a right then straight along until she saw the donut shop where they stopped for donuts that one time in the summer and Taylor ordered a jelly donut and she’d swiped it because Taylor had made some stupid joke and it got all over her clothes but it was funny anyway and...  
  
She slowly brought her car to a stop in front of the house.  
  
It wasn’t really a house anymore. The ground was strewn with debris that scraggly weeds were only just forcing their way up around. Blackened rubble sat in the concrete remains of the collapsed basement. The tree in the yard was long dead.  
  
It was gone.  
  
When did it burn down?  
  
She didn’t hear anything about it having burned down.  
  
Taylor loved that house.  
  
After her mom died, she said it was what kept her memory close, the house that her parents had bought together.  
  
It looked like it had burned down a long time ago.  
  
She hadn’t known.  
  
How could she have not known? It was Taylor’s house.  
  
Taylor wasn’t her friend, though.  
  
Emma walked through the fence gate. Something crunched under her foot.  
  
How did she not know? She had enough childhood memories bound up in this place that she should have felt something, she should have known about it somehow.  
  
She’d thrown Taylor away, and while she was gone memories of her childhood had just...gone up in smoke.  
  
Memories before she thought about predators and prey.  
  
Memories before her friends in college getting her to stop being so angry at everything.  
  
Memories that she’d turned to, even as she ignored the fact that Taylor was in so many of them.  
  
She’d fixed herself, hadn’t she? She’d survived. She was better now. She didn’t think of people as weak, or prey, or anything. She wasn’t cruel. She helped people. Even Sophia was doing better, now that she had a job she loved and her own place.  
  
The memories had helped. She hadn’t tried to make new ones. She ignored the guilt that should have been there when she thought about Taylor.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Now the house was gone and Taylor was gone and what had even happened she didn’t even know Taylor anymore why hadn’t she tried to talk to her or get in contact or anything she could have been there again she could have been better-  
  
Maybe...  
  
Her friends would know, right? Lily had been friends with Taylor, her other game friends would know what had happened to her, would have been there for her.  
  
She could just ask them what happened, and they’d tell her where Taylor was, and she could apologize and everything would be fine. Taylor hadn’t been alone! She’d had all these people with her. She had plenty of friends. She was probably just sad because the game ended. She still had friends. She’d find new games. Taylor wasn’t broken. She was fine.  
  
Her friends would say as much. They’d tell her plenty of stories about how Taylor was really super happy online and hanging out with them and that she had a new job that she was really into and-  
  
Emma took a deep breath. Her thoughts slowly ground to a halt, and she dialed the first number.  
  
Voicemail.  
  
Lily hadn’t lied about this Sarah being busy. Even in her voicemail message she sounded rushed. She left a message with her name and number asking about Taylor. Easy.  
  
Fuck. That message was awful. Emma tried again.  
  
That done, Emma went on to the next number on the list.  
  
Colin...Colin...she knew a Colin from somewhere, didn’t she?  
  
 _“Fuck, Ems, Wallis has been riding my ass this week after I beat up some fucking druggie a little too hard for his liking.”  
  
“Man, fuck that asshole. Prick’s been getting on my case again. Dude needs to get laid or some shit.”  
  
“Oh my god, so, there’s this rumor at the station, right? Colin’s apparently got an internet girlfriend. But wait, it gets better...”  
  
“Yeah, sorry, Colin took a bunch of us out drinking after that shootout. Dude ain’t so bad, really, once you get past that shell of hardass.”  
  
“So, Colin says to the guy, ‘Can I see your ID, please?’ in his most stick-up-his-ass voice, and what do ya know, the dumb fuck actually stops and shows it to him, which is when I...”_  
  
Right, that sergeant Sophia took a shine to on the force. Maybe she should call Sophia, actually. Emma hadn’t talked to her in days, which was rare. A burst of modeling work had come up, and then this whole fiasco with Taylor...  
  
Yeah. She could use a chat with Sophia. Get herself into a better headspace.  
  
She dialed the familiar number into her phone and let it ring.  
  
“Ems!”  
  
“Hey Soph. What’s up?”  
  
“You called at just the right time, actually. Colin’s internet girlfriend might not be fake after all!”  
  
“Is that disappointment I hear?”  
  
“Gross! He’s like twice my age. Anyway, he got a call from someone and left to take it, but he sounded really shocked, and I heard the name Lily.”  
  
Emma blinked.  
  
“Lily? Really?”  
  
“Yeah. I was shocked too, a girl calling Colin?” Laughter from the other end of the line. “But I asked some of the guys, and they said Colin had a bunch of nerds he used to dick around online with before he got promoted and shackled himself to his desk.”  
  
Huh. Small world.  
  
“Actually, I think I was just about to call Colin, myself.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Yeah, I actually ran into Lily just a little bit ago. She was a friend from college.”  
  
“Is she pretty?”  
  
“What does that-”  
  
“I’ve got money riding on this, Ems.”  
  
“I mean, I guess, but she’s gay, so-”  
  
“Fuck!” There was murmuring from the other end of the line as Sophia cursed and someone else laughed. “Fucking Carlos and his stupid bets.”  
  
“Out another twenty?”  
  
“Shut up!” More laughter in the background, along with the sound of a door opening.  
  
“Anyway, Soph, can you ask Colin if he wants to go grab coffee with us later? I’m curious about Lily’s gaming friends.”  
  
“Oh, I see. You want him all to yourself. Hate to break it to ya, but he is not a looker. Particularly his awful beard. Which he should really shave. Because it’s terrible.” Indignant noises from the background.  
  
Sophia’s voice was fainter as she covered the phone to shout at Colin. “Yo! Col! You remember Ems from the christmas party?” Emma blushed. She didn’t want to remember, or even think about, that night. “She wants to talk to you ‘bout some shit over coffee later!”  
  
A moment of murmuring. “Yeah, he’s in.”


	3. Chapter 3

The coffee shop was one of the little fancy ones with smooth jazz and artisinal beans or something that made the coffee cost, like, twice as much. Emma and Sophia specifically picked it out to needle Colin, who chugged instant coffee like it was the nectar of the gods.  
  
Taking it just a little further, Emma already had orders for each of them by the time Colin and Sophia arrived. Emma had to say, the guy looked good for being somewhere in his forties. Kept in shape. She could absolutely see what Sophia constantly denied she saw in him.  
  
Colin cast a forlorn look at the whipped-cream topped monstrosity in front of him as Sophia took the other chair. Emma quietly sipped her iced coffee with a smirk.  
  
And then he brought it back and returned with a mug of black. No fun. Sophia gave Emma such a pained look of long-suffering that she couldn’t help but laugh at it.  
  
Colin looked over at the table at her, eyes appraising her in that weird way he did to anyone he had to talk to. It wasn’t sexual or anything like that, it was all focused on taking in every detail of her face. It was all very mechanical. Emma thought she might be able to get Sophia to write up a bingo sheet or something of his actions, given how predictable he was.  
  
The Christmas party was, obviously, an outlier.  
  
“So.” He said, his voice flat. “What did you want to talk about?”  
  
“Well, I was talking to Lily a little while ago...”  
  
Colin nodded. “You’re the friend she was talking about? She called to let me know you’d want to chat. This is about Taylor?”  
  
Sophia almost spat out her drink. “Wait, you mean Taylor ‘the hugest wuss ever’ Hebert? She was one of your gaming buddies?”  
  
Colin gave her a weird look. “I doubt it’s the same person, if that’s how you remember her.”  
  
Emma shook her head. “No, it’s definitely the same person. I’m trying to get in touch with her again.”  
  
“Really, Ems? Her? I seem to remember you being way too ‘strong’ for her.” She said it with a mocking tone, then flexed comically.  
  
“Look, I just wanted to talk to her again, alright?”  
  
“Whatever, Ems.”  
  
Colin coughed, and continued. “Well, I haven’t been in contact with her for a while, now. Not since I quit the game.”  
  
“Do you know where she lives so I can go talk to her?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Emma leaned back in her chair, sighing at the blunt response. Fuck. No progress there. Although, he could probably at least tell her what Taylor was like in the game.  
  
“Well, can you tell me about how she was, then? I’m curious.” Sophia gave her a look, but Colin nodded and began to talk.  
  
“I wasn’t ever friends with her. She was the guildmaster, I was in the guild. I never really took the opportunity to socialize with her much. Our conversations were almost all business..”  
  
Emma frowned. Hearing thirdhand hearsay didn’t sound like what she wanted. “Are you sure you don’t have any stories?”  
  
Sophia answered, instead. “You do not want to hear Colin try to tell a story. It’s all dry laundry-listing of random bullshit and tangents into whatever popped up on his favorite science blog of the week.”  
  
An abashed Colin cleared his throat, and began.  
  


* * *

  
“Hey, new kid, grab me a cup of joe for the road, will ya?”  
  
Colin complied, pausing packing up his backpack for the day, and made his way to the break room. One cup of coffee for Commissioner Tagg. Pot’s empty. Filter, fresh grounds from the third cupboard on the right, water from the tap, pot back underneath, let it brew.  
  
Colin tugged at the collar of his uniform. It was still a little starchy.  
  
The break room was fairly dull, as rooms went. Colin felt it likely that ‘break’ was a misnomer. The intent had to have been to encourage people to leave and go back to work as quickly as humanly possible. There could really be no other reason for walls this particular shade of mind-numbing boredom white, or counters done up in such an artfully hideous beige that it made him want to puke. The chairs were folding chairs, as likely as not to break if touched by more than a light breeze. The table wobbled, and Colin was pretty sure that was something he’d never actually encountered in real life before. He preferred to stand, thanks.  
  
Colin fiddled with the sleeves of his shirt. They were a little wrinkly. There was also a piece of lint stuck to one that he quickly removed.  
  
The coffee maker beeped. Colin removed a mug from the second cupboard on the left, examined it, rinsed it in the sink, and poured in the coffee. One packet of sugar, one dose of half-and-half, stir. Leave the stirring rod in. Pick up by the handle, be careful not to spill it.  
  
Colin set the mug back down on the counter, then fiddled with his badge. It had been just a little crooked all day, and he just couldn’t seem to get it on right.  
  
Pick up mug. Right, right, door, door-on-right, place mug on desk. Exchange brief pleasantries with Tagg. Why yes, it is nice weather. No, no plans for the weekend. Good talking to you too. Exit office, grab bag from desk, and leave the station. Another day, another dollar. No, ‘kid’ most certainly does not want a ride, thanks. ‘Kid’ can take the bus home just fine himself.  
  
This uniform must be too tight, Colin decided. And stiff. He could barely bend his arms, even, and sitting down on the way home it felt like he was being tied up. He would have to get some fabric softener for it. Maybe over the weekend, when he felt a little less tired.  
  
Colin’s apartment was dark, sparsely furnished, and cramped, just the way he liked it. It was only a few steps to the fridge to grab yesterday’s dinner, a few more to hit the microwave. In barely any time and barely any effort, he was seated in front of his computer with a bowl of reheated pasta and watching a couple of videos about the latest happenings online.  
  
Keeping up with the news about Yggdrasil was important. Information was key in that game, after all. Defiant would be very much dead and gone if Colin didn’t take his time gathering information on each of his prospective player kills. Even if, occasionally, his sources of information and his PK targets were the same. All’s fair in love and war, and Defiant could see the top of the pile from where he stood.  
  
His target tonight…a player known as Skitter. A magic-user of sorts, relying almost entirely on the synergy between her race and insect-based spells. Around equal him in level. Notorious for her usage of psychological warfare and unconventional tactics to supplement PKs, and for luring potential PKers into traps where her guild would descend upon them like a pack of wolves. Dangerous, but simple. Minmax equipment for total resistance against anything insect-based, burn some Scan Crystals to keep an eye out for her team nearby, and take her down in melee, where she’ll be weakest.  
  
Mind made up, Defiant proceeded to pull up his master equipment and spell lists, cross-reference them, and create a fully impervious set. Armor that was water- and air-tight on top of anti-insect defensive enchantments and general defensive buffs, a set of useful bound spells in his halberd focusing on closing ability and speed to overwhelm Skitter, and enough consumables of all varieties to last him fifty PvP fights.  
  
This was what he was made for, and what his reputation as Defiant was. He would field the perfect set, the perfect equipment, the perfect skills and spells. It wasn’t easy, particularly with the sort of assholes like that Dauntless troll who would find effortless infinite-ability loops until the GMs invariably banned them, but Defiant stood for being able to perfectly counter any other player with no mechanic-twisting needed. He just needed to be better, to be quicker at getting his loadouts together, at getting more levels. He needed to show up all the hackers and the cheats and prove, once and for all, that he could make it as a top player.  
  
With no proper insect-type dedicated anti-scrying spell, Defiant didn’t have to spend anything too expensive to locate her. A basic single-use Bowl of Scrying pegged her location at a grinding zone, which was convenient. She would already be weakened to some degree by the mobs she was fighting, at which point Defiant could swoop in and destroy her with impunity. Another item told him that she was alone. He burned a teleport scroll to the nearest hub and summoned his mount.  
  
The trolls and other assorted riffraff, as usual, took exception to his presence. He could see them emoting as passive-aggressively as they could, mic-use symbols flashing above some of their heads. It wasn’t important. He rode on. He’d already muted chat and turned off voice, so they couldn’t touch him, and they all knew how effective he was, or they would have attacked. Cowards and idiots.  
  
The scenery blew by. Virtual wind streamed into his virtual helmet. The sounds of hoofbeats, sufficiently decreased in volume, made for a pleasant bit of background noise, since as always he had the music muted. No in game music meant it was easier to hear an enemy’s audio cues.  
  
Ahead of him loomed the entrance to the Quorian Quarry, a cutesy name for a brutal grinding location. It was, rumor had it, incredibly efficient, provided you were willing to risk the ridiculous status conditions the mobs in there could inflict.  
  
Colin dismounted his mount and began to make his way into the Quarry. The mobs were simple enough to deal with, for him. He simply activated the stealth features of his armor and vanished. Neither mob nor player would be able to pierce the enchantments he had, optimized to the utmost as they were. He ignored the glowing crystals in the walls that replenished themselves every few seconds. No point in worrying about sidequests. He ducked past large Rustflake Golems, swirling with chips of metal and gleaming eyespots. Debuffs to his equipment, however temporary, could be ruinous, and he had all their good drops already anyway. He didn’t even glance at the random decorative elements. Lanterns and weeds were just plainly unimportant, when he could be using his thoughts to go over his strategies just a little more.  
  
His waypoint flashed. He was close. He dropped a scan crystal, and watched as the mage’s outline shone through the walls of the dungeon. He was well out of her sensing range according to his intel, and then some extra, to be safe. Defiant prepared his equipment one final time: going over every last game mechanic he held in his nigh-encyclopedic memory in order to be absolutely sure.  
  
She just engaged with a new mob! Defiant moved. Around the corner, still stealthed, use an Insecticide Burst power from his halberd to cut off some of her MP and limit her ability to sense him, then recloak. Invisibly zigzagging, moving at a fully boosted sprint, Defiant closed into melee with the unsuspecting mage.  
  
Except she was already facing him, and looked ready. The mob she had been fighting had health in the red, quickly draining. A Damage over Time effect? Infestation was likely the culprit, in which case Defiant would have to account for a few extra insectoid mobs. Not that they would be able to damage him, or even really impede him, before he was able to take down Skitter.  
  
He could see her attempting to discorporate into bugs in order to escape, but he was prepared for that. Even though she was doing it far sooner than he had planned. Defiant quickly pinged his Form Anchor enchantment, and watched as Skitter became solid in front of him once more. One easy swing was all he needed, now.  
  
The mob behind her burst into a series of insectoid mobs, as expected. Silk Soarers. Massive wasps with silk-producing organs instead of stingers, useful battlefield control. Sadly for Skitter, his equipment allowed him to move without penalty through insect-produced obstacles. There was nothing she could-  
  
The Silk Soarers, still a bit of a ways behind Skitter, suddenly locked onto her with quickly fired lines of silk and reeled her back in. She could make her mobs target herself with attacks for mobility? He hadn’t seen anyone talk about that. Defiant’s swing went wide.  
  
Alright, Plan A was done. Surprise had, somehow, failed him. But he still had tricks up his sleeve, and plenty of bound spells and skills in his halberd. He let out another Insecticide Burst, with more power this time. He had to prevent her from casting more spells, and her passive swarm aura fueled her Mana. He also had to take out her Silk Soarers, who were now scattering in order to drag her to strategic locations faster than her avatar could move. Prevent spellcasting, limit mobility, finishing blow. Simple.  
  
Skitter watched him, compound yellow eyes boring into his armor. What was she thinking? She had lost already. He was too well prepared, at this point. It had been mere seconds, and already he was releasing a series of weak-but-strong-enough-for-mobs homing bolts to take out her Soarers. Another second and he was closing with Skitter once more. Still unable to cast a spell, she instead brought up something in her hand.  
  
When had she gotten into her inventory? What had she drawn?  
  
His halberd’s first blow glanced off the blade of a gleaming knife. How the hell had she gotten an Auto-Parry enchantment? Still, it was on cooldown now, and Defiant was by far the better melee fighter. He went in for a follow-up attack.  
  
Only to realize that his avatar was stunned. She’d broken through his rudimentary stun prevention enchantments, since he hadn’t been expecting hand-to-hand, nor Auto-Parry. Did she have a Stun Enhance enchantment on that knife too? How much was that damn thing worth?  
  
Still, his armor was impervious to any significant damage she could do. Her melee skill, while letting her survive this far, was atrocious. Her spells were all insect-based, and thus worthless against his current loadout. She didn’t have anywhere near enough time to kite mobs to him in the brief moment he was stunned for. She was fighting valiantly to the last, but she wouldn’t win. Still, he could appreciate defiance to the end in the face of an overwhelmingly better-prepared opponent.  
  
She’d taken another item from her inventory. Not that she would have anything that could kill him, or even wound him. He was immune, at least in part, to every condition under the sun that could be reasonably guarded against. There was nothing she could do to…  
  
A spell! She was using the time she had to cast a spell. Colin watched as her avatar’s hands drifted around, as her mandibles chittered at him, as the spell’s effect began to take hold.  
  
A single, roundish, ponderously slow insect appeared from within between her hands. Practically a zero mana spell, made for lighting up dungeons! Just with an insect theme. Defiant wanted to laugh at the futile gesture. This was all she had the mana to cast, wasn’t it.  
  
The bug was pushed, with sudden speed, in front of his face, and then it flashed bright. Defiant’s vision went white. He cursed. He was immune to the blinded status, but a bright light in front of his face would still block his avatar’s ability to see anything. His blindsense overlay was useless here, it just provided an overlay of more light onto his vision that worked in the darkness, this much light made it impossible to see. He staggered backwards, trying to get far enough away that the light would dim. When it didn’t, he swiped his halberd in front of him, then, realizing what was going on, he swiped it again an inch from his face, and was rewarded with a crunching noise and the light gone from his vision. He quickly turned to figure out where Skitter was.  
  
She was right behind him. And had just activated something. He could see the last frames of the skill animation play out, an item in her hand. There was no time to dodge.  
  
There was an explosion of warnings in his field of view. Encumbrance penalties were suddenly being applied. His enchantments were deactivated. He’d lost his ability for his character to move at full speed in armor, to use his armor at all.  
  
Defiant collapsed.  
  
He watched helplessly as Skitter strode towards him. Damn! What had he done wrong? He had been prepared for anything! Anything except…whatever it was that she had done. Now he was going to be out a full set of equipment, and he was going to have to re-grind five levels, on top of figuring out a counter to whatever it was that Skitter had just done to him.  
  
The microphone icon lit up above her head. Was she trying to gloat over him? As if he was going to allow her the satisfaction. She’d already destroyed his reputation. He could see it now, the jeering on the forums as the great Defiant was taken out by a single bug mage.  
  
Although…perhaps if he kept her talking, this effect would wear off? Or at least she might tell him what it was.  
  
“-impressed by what you did.”  
  
Defiant blinked. That didn’t sound like gloating.  
  
“What? My voice was off.”  
  
Skitter paused for a moment, then looked down at him. “I was just saying how I was impressed by what you did. You build was, honestly, basically impossible to beat. How do you do it?”  
  
Defiant blinked. Then he narrowed his eyes. She was clearly just trying to milk him for information oh hang on she’s speaking again-  
  
“It’s honestly impressive, the amount of care you put into your build. Listen, it’s obviously going to take a lot of time and gold to build yourself a new set of equipment. What say you join my guild instead? We could use someone with your skills.”  
  
Defiant spluttered. Join a guild? Him? He ran solo, otherwise he would never get the recognition he deserved. There was no reason for him to join a guild. Besides, he had plenty of time, and plenty of time to work on getting more gold. Not as though his job was worth the effort. Why would he bind himself to another organization where he would be drowned out by hundreds of other members, when he could easily get much more fame on his own?  
  
“We’re small, at the moment. We only take the best, among other things. So far there’s, oh, about ten people? But we’re known. You’ve seen people on the forums talking about the Hive, haven’t you?”  
  
With a start, Defiant realized that he had. Then he remembered something else about the Hive.  
  
“Don’t you only accept monstrous players? My character is human.”  
  
There was a moment of silence.  
  
“Well, no, you’re a Lycan now.”  
  
Defiant quietly muted his mic and screamed. She’d changed his base race! No wonder none of his class abilities were working, he’d lost all of his prerequisites!  
  
“How in the hell-”  
  
“I had a Human-Lycan conversion item, and while you were frozen I boosted my Thievery to the point where I could reverse pickpocket and activate items on you.”  
  
“That’s-”  
  
“Not supposed to work on class-conversion items, but I found out that technically Blood of the Lycan is a poison first, and a class-change item second.”  
  
Defiant muted his mic and screamed again. She’d beaten him because of a bug!  
  
He then promptly refused to acknowledge the fact that the insect wizard apparently used gamebreaking bugs the same way she used the normal sorts and began to think.  
  
She was skillful. More skillful than him, in some ways. She clearly had a type of mechanical knowledge he hadn’t thought about, one of exploits and technical uses for skills, not numerical ones. And her guild was already infamous to a degree. Like him. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to join. He could always learn their skills, leave the guild, and use that information to take them down. Yes, that would be a good plan.  
  
“I…I’ll join the Hive.”  
  


* * *

  
“And, well, that’s how I joined the Hive.” Colin finished. “They even convinced me to change my nickname to Armsmaster. And, well, it was nice there. People appreciated what I could do for them.”  
  
Emma nodded. So that was what Taylor had been like, then. A recruiter. She’d go out and find people for the guild, and she’d bring them in. Surprisingly social, for her. It was impressive, really. Not what Emma was expecting, but welcome. Here it was, definitive proof that Taylor had been doing something while Emma had been out of contact with her.  
  
Outside the cafe afterward Emma mulled over the encounter. Despite the reassurance she had received, she was still no closer to actually finding Taylor’s new place.  
  
She could probably just…keep going down the list. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. There was probably a lot about Taylor’s life that she was still missing.


	4. Chapter 4

Emma stared across the dining table at Ciara.  
  
God, were all of Taylor’s friends like this?  
  
She’d arrived right on time, at six-o-clock on a Saturday. The house had seemed plenty normal. Car in the driveway, potted plants on the balcony, lights on in the windows. Normal person with a slightly odd name.  
  
Then Emma had been let in, and led to a dining room packed with strange nerd paraphernalia. Cabinets originally intended for holding fine china were crammed with Handbooks and Campaign Guides. Tiny figures of people with comically oversized weapons and medieval-y clothes sat in carefully cleaned display cases. The shelves on the far wall were laden with binders bursting with graph paper, and the graph paper next to them were bursting with neatly labeled boxes and flowery writing about elves.  
  
Worse yet was the dining table. The very end of it was given over to what looked to be a shrine to junk food. A bountiful cornucopia of cheese puffs, barbecue chips, pretzel sticks, chocolates, gummy bears, and sour worms, hemmed in by two twelve-pack boxes of tooth-rotting sodas. Then, there was a set of tiny trees and houses, set on fake grass and dirt, populated by miniatures of peasants and werewolves and who-knows-what-else. The carefully constructed shrunken landscape was ringed by four stacks of paper coated with crabbed writing about gold and STR and half-orcs packed into odd-looking charts. By each one of these piles was a person.  
  
One was a guy with dyed bright green hair and that was more or less where Emma stopped caring about him. One was a chubby-looking man with thinning curly hair who looked boring to a degree which was, honestly, pretty impressive. One was a woman with dark, braided hair whose expression seemed dangerously contemplative as she stared across the table at the balding man. One was a woman with messy blond hair who was looking down at her papers with half-lidded eyes. At the head of the table was Ciara herself, in all of her infuriating forty-looks-twenty glory.  
  
The balding man clapped his hands. “Alright, I think I’m going to roll up a Wizard to replace poor Istanna, our lovely elven cleric who was gone too soon-”  
  
The messy-haired blonde interrupted him with a voice which was both angry and lackadaisical. “I swear to Kord, Eli, if you roll one more Chaotic Evil character I will punch your heart out of your chest.”  
  
“Says the girl who always plays Monks.”  
  
The dark-haired girl gave a mad-sounding giggle. “I wouldn’t test her, Eli. One time, a guy asked her out at a bar, and she punched him through three tables.”  
  
“That wasn’t how it happened and you know it.”  
  
“Fine, fine. Two tables and a bottle of whiskey.”  
  
“Katey!”  
  
Katey giggled.  
  
Green-haired guy lightly punched Eli in the arm. “Abbie’s not wrong though, man. Seems like you’re basically always trying to screw us over with your characters.”  
  
Eli gave a comically indignant gasp. “Who, me? Why, Ziri was never against you!”  
  
“Not that it stopped him from betraying us over forty gold and a +1 mace.” Pointed out the green-haired guy.  
  
“Sarry defended you all to her dying breath against that Medusa, didn’t she?”  
  
“Only after she’d stolen all of my molotovs and tried to kill Abbie’s poor monk in her sleep.” Katey chimed in.  
  
“Plus we had to literally shackle her to the medusa to make her.” Added Abbie.  
  
“And poor Sinezz-”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Do not bring him up.”  
  
“You’re really going to argue he wasn’t actively trying to get us all killed?”  
  
“Okay, so my characters made a few mistakes…”  
  
“No, we’re having a party vote. All in favor of making Eli’s next character Lawful Good?” Katey looked around the table. “Wow, unanimous.”  
  
“I didn’t vote!”  
  
“You don’t get a vote, Eli.”  
  
“That’s discrimination!”  
  
“Stop being evil and maybe we’ll let you vote again.”  
And as Eli sat back with an exasperated huff, Emma shot a quizzical look at Ciara.  
  
Thus prompted, Ciara clapped her hands together and spoke over the rest of the table's chatter.  
"Now now, I have to entertain our other guest for a moment, so please keep things fairly civil until I get back, alright?"  
  
Varying degrees of affirmative statements sounded out from the nerd squad around the table. Satisfied, Ciara stood from her seat at the head of the table, and beckoned for Emma to follow her.  
  
Thankfully, the living room was far less subsumed by incomprehensible geekbabble.  
  
Ciara took a dainty seat on one couch, while Emma relaxed into an armchair. It had to be noted that the furniture in here seemed more grandmother-era than anything else. Apparently the woman loved her antiques.  
  
Ciara gave Emma a light smile. "Sorry about them, they popped in early for tonight's game."  
  
Emma grimaced. "Game? Seems less like a game and more like the world's nerdiest cult."  
  
Ciara laughed in a a thoroughly unsettling way, and Emma realized with a start that if it was a cult she was now trapped in a house with five insane nerds and would probably be sacrificed to some kind of math-themed devil.  
  
Ciara took Emma's uncomfortableness in stride. "Don't worry, they're harmless. Just some friends of mine from Baumann University that I kept in touch with."  
Emma was shocked, leaning in to the conversation. "You went to the Birdcage? And got out alive?"  
  
Ciara chuckled. "If you call life with a Medieval Studies degree living." Seeing that Emma was still staring at her in wonder, she continued. "Baumann U isn't as bad as people say it is. Sure, the classes are tough and more people wind up sticking around there than moving on with their lives, but it's not a bad school."  
  
"Wait, you have a degree in Medieval Studies? What-" Emma looked around at the house. On the larger side, nice neighborhood, filled to the brim with random bits of pricey paraphernalia... The sort of house someone with a decent job would have. What did Medieval Studies even mean?  
  
"Oh, you know, the internet is a marvelous place."  
Emma wheeled around to face Ciara. The internet? What?  
"There's a wonderful market there for trinkets, custom campaigns, fresh monsters... Keeps the lights on, you know."  
  
Seeing Emma's blank stare, Ciara moved on. "Anyway, I can't imagine you came here to chat about the prospects of my employment. What was it you wanted?"  
  
"I, uh, wanted to talk to you about Taylor."  
  
"Taylor? I don't know any Taylor."  
  
Emma pushed herself to her feet. Stupid Lily and her stupid wrong numbers and wasting her time like this-  
  
"I do, however, know the Swarm Queen, Sorceress of the Exoskeletal, grand ruler of the Hive and all it oversaw, the legendary tyrant who crushed guilds under her heel and created a scourge of villainy that ravaged all of Yggdrasil for more than a decade."  
  
Emma slowly lowered herself back into her seat.  
  
"And I just so happen to have a story about her."  
  


* * *

  
Glaistig Uaine, the Faerie Queen, was enigmatic at the best of times. When foes saw her descend on a battlefield in all of her otherworldly glory, they turned and ran, for they knew there was no negotiating that could be done. As soon as she arrived, the lives of all present were forfeit.  
  
Yet, there was also a way that things must be done. For all of her formidable strength, tradition was still yet stronger. And tradition had told her time and again that however powerful she was, sooner or later she would need allies, backup.  
  
And there was one place monsters could get allies.  
Other, lesser Queens might have chafed at falling under the dominion of another, but Glaistig was a master of decorum.  
  
Besides, no matter what Queen you were, it was clear where the Swarm Queen stood.  
  
Glaistig Uaine was a monster, sure. People ran from her, people feared her. But the Swarm Queen was different. People despaired when the Swarm Queen appeared. Glaistig Uaine could kill you. Skitter could call down a biblical plague at her whim.  
  
And so it was that Glaistig Uaine marched through the Hive to the great meeting hall. When Skitter raised a summons, you answered, no matter who you were.  
The leader of the Hive was seated at the far end of a table with incredible proportions. One which could seat a full set of forty-one assorted monsters, all of whom commanded earth-shaking power.  
  
This was where the Hive met, the greatest alliance of villainy the world had ever seen.  
  
Yet, nobody else was present. Skitter was the only one seated there. The rest of the guild members were absent. Glaistig wondered what sort of meeting this could be. One between Queens?  
  
Skitter seemed to register her presence then. Her compound eyes rose from the documents on the table in front of her to scan the individual who had just entered. Glaistig curtseyed in response, before making her dainty way over to her seat at the table.  
  
Skitter spoke, her voice reverberating with the echoes of a thousand tiny buzzing wingbeats. A voice which commanded awe.  
  
"Glaistig. It is good that you came."  
  
A slight bow of the head. "It is my pleasure, Administrator. What is it you seek of the Faerie Queen on this day?"  
  
Skitter took one of the documents in front of her and slid it across the table to Glaistig. "The Hive has been summoned to a summit, at the peak of Ysgard's tallest mountain. As the leader of our monstrous alliance, I am allowed to bring a single lieutenant."  
  
Glaistig Uaine scanned the document. A meeting of all the most powerful guilds was being held at the legendary neutral ground of Somer's Rock, so named for the explorer Kyrgard Somer who first scaled the mountain and discovered it.  
  
Then Glaistig noticed the subject of the meeting.  
"Administrator, this is about the great demon Yughanor! Aren't we preparing to lay siege to that demon and take its treasure for ourselves?"  
  
Skitter nodded. "We are indeed, and that will not change. Our goal here is not to discuss the prospect of alliances, nor to share what we have learned. Our goal is to convince the other guilds to stay out of our way."  
  
Her voice was cold as she continued. "That they have this information is unfortunate, but that is why we must ensure they will not be acting on it. After all, we are mere days from besieging that demon, and taking the item of unparalleled strength lying in its lair. This effort cannot go to waste."  
  
"I need you by my side for this meeting, Glaistig. Your name carries weight. Showing that both Queens of the Hive are willing to show themselves in the name of defeating this demon will surely cow those fools in their ivory towers."  
  
Glaistig nodded. "Administrator, I take it we were not invited?"  
  
Skitter stood to her full height. "Monsters like us need no invitation."  
  


\-------------—

  
The winds were howling as the two Queens descended upon the peak of the mountain. Blizzarding snow whipped around their forms, yet no cold reached through their protective enchantments. With grace and poise, Skitter landed lightly on the snow in front of Somer's Rock, with Glaistig Uaine following closely behind.  
  
Before them, a team of sentries guarded the massive hollow geode that was Somer's Rock. Mere foot soldiers, rank-and-file from the unwashed masses that served the Red Gauntlet, or perhaps the Adepts. Glaistig didn't waste her precious aeons memorizing every trifling mortal attempt at empire-building that came and went.  
  
Curses rang out in the air, and the sentries clambered to their feet from where they had been lounging in the snow.  
  
One, braver than the rest, stepped forward. He was a weaselly fellow in thin armor. His teeth chittered in the mountain air as he spoke.  
  
"H-h-halt, monsters! T-t-this is a truce ground! Y-y-your kind are not welcome here!"  
  
Skitter merely strode forward with regal confidence. "Welcome or not, a truce is a truce. I'm sure you would be happy to explain to your superior why you broke it with us and brought our full wrath down on their heads?"  
  
The soldier took a wary step backwards. "A-a-all due respect, m-m-miss, I don't think you can take on this many guild leaders at once."  
  
Skitter leveled her gaze at him. "Really now. Do you think I've ever failed at something because you thought I couldn't do it?"  
  
The soldier looked from side to side, nervously. His fellow soldiers had already started to back away from him. "I-I-I..."  
  
Skitter leaned in close. "Let me tell you something, little soldier. You know me. You know that better equipped, better trained, better coordinated foes have fallen to my swarm. Now, what sort of odds do you give the uncoordinated riffraff in there, who are undoubtedly already at each others' throats?"  
  
The soldier gulped, loudly.  
  
"Exactly. Now, we will head in, and we will be observing the truce exactly as honorably as anyone else here. Am I clear?"  
  
"C-c-crystal, m-m-miss."  
  
Glaistig nodded appreciatively at the threat. Uphold the truce, and the Queens will do the same. Fail to do so, and invite their punishment. Simple and effective.  
  
With that, they entered Somer's Rock. The center of the huge hemisphere was dominated by a crystal pedestal, on which stood a man with an appearance that could only be described as statuesque. That was to say, a doughy claylike core coated in so much bronze the original form had been lost.  
  
Around this, circles of seating carved into the living amethyst rose up the sides of the geode. High above, light shone out from where it was trapped, inside a giant, unmarred crystal.  
  
The seats held a selection of humanoids all dolled up to make themselves look impressive. Gilding had spread like moss over the armor of these buffoons, apparently. Glaistig would have shaken her head if she weren't busy firmly adhering to decorum.  
  
The man on the plinth turned to face the Queens, a sneer on his face that melted into his voice. "And who invited the two of you?"  
  
"We invited ourselves, for we have a message!" Proclaimed Skitter, and her voice echoed around the crystalline chamber for several seconds following. The clicks and buzzes sent several of the lieutenants cowering back into their seats.  
  
It was good that some of these fools held respect for royalty. The man in the center, however, did not.  
  
"A message? You should know that the united forces of humanoids do not take threats lightly."  
  
"This is not a threat, my dear humanoid," hissed Skitter. "Rather, it is a promise. Hear me, so-called united forces! The demon Yughanor, Archduke of the Fifth Layer, is the Hive's prey, and no other!"  
  
The man on the plinth leapt off, landing with a boom which echoed throughout the room. Several of the other guild leaders let out small gasps as he strode towards Skitter and Glaistig, and he spoke in a way that rumbled through the bones of all present who possessed them.  
  
"Well hear me, representatives of the Hive. I, Chubster, the Earth-Shaker, shall block your path no matter what may come. That demon must be defeated by the forces of good, not devoured by a band of monsters yet more dangerous."  
  
"Forces of self-proclaimed good, if this demon truly belongs to you, why have you yet to act on it? As we speak the forces of the Hive are mobilizing, preparing to take on the beast while you sit in here and speak of who gets what percentage of his hide." Skitter spat, as though she were speaking a curse on the warrior in front of her.  
  
The warrior took up his mace at that, and shouted so loud that all of Somer's Rock shook. "So be it, then! You, Queen of Swarms, and you, Faerie Queen, will not leave Somer's Rock alive! For if you are slain, the Hive will be headless, and we may claim our prize!"  
Reluctantly, the others present all stood, at which point Skitter nodded to Glaistig Uaine. The Faerie Queen knew what to do. A single bolt flashed from her palm, and the amethyst above the hall was shattered, the light inside being replaced with a thick, cloying, all-consuming darkness. A spell learned from a former Hive member.  
  
By the time the darkness cleared, the Queens would be long gone.  
  


* * *

  
“And in the end, that was enough. The other guilds cowered in fear at the prospect of defying the Queens, and no amount of bravado from Chubster would sway them. So it was that the Hive fell on the lair of Yughanor with fire and fury, and secured many magic items, and there was much rejoicing.”  
  
Ciara leaned back in her chair, her story apparently concluded. Emma wasn’t willing to let things end that abruptly though.  
  
“Wait, so, were you Glaistig Uaine?”  
  
Ciara tapped her fingers on her armchair. “Well, I was the player behind Glaistig Uaine, sure. I wouldn’t say we were the same, though. She’s more of an embellishment of myself. Good roleplaying is like that.”  
  
Emma blinked. “Roleplaying?”  
  
“Yes, roleplaying. What my good friends in the other room are probably throwing Cheetos at each other about right now.” A slight hubbub in the dining room died down as she spoke.  
  
“And, that guild leader guy, his name was actually Chubster?” Emma asked, incredulity leaking into her voice.  
  
“Well, yes. I may have embellished his speech a little, just for the sake of setting the proper tone, of course, but there really was a guild leader named Chubster there.”  
  
“Embellished? Did Taylor really say anything that you said she did?” Emma was getting angry now. This whole meeting had been a colossal waste of time! This stupid woman hadn’t given her any answers at all, just some stupid story wrapped up in Ring Lords posturing. Or whatever those movies were called. Emma hadn’t seen them.  
  
“Do you really expect me to remember everything she said word for word? This was years ago, Emma. And besides, it makes for a much better story if we ignore all of the video game talk and keep everything in character.”  
  
“Fine! Fine. Whatever. I get it. You’re not going to tell me the truth,” Emma huffed.  
  
“I definitely told you the truth, even if it wasn’t exactly what happened.”  
  
“That doesn’t even make sense!”  
  
Ciara shrugged. “Anyway, was there anything else you wanted to ask me about, or are you going to go continue on your quest?”  
  
“Don’t call it a quest! And yes. I do have something else to ask. Do you know where Taylor is living now?”  
  
Ciara shook her head. “No, I never asked much about her real life. It was a fantasy game, after all. We played our characters with each other. Asking about her personal life would have been a bit of an intrusion, and meant breaking character besides.”  
  
Frustrated, Emma got to her feet. “I’m going to go. Have fun with your dungeons or whatever.”  
  
“Good luck on your quest.”  
  
“And do not call it a quest!”  
  
With that, Emma stormed out. How did Taylor get along with people like that? That woman had her head so far in the clouds it was a wonder she didn’t walk around coated in bird shit. Hopefully this Alan person would be more normal. With a normal job, not whatever the fuck ‘the internet’ meant. Who the fuck called ‘the internet’ a job, anyway? It was ridiculous!  
  
Hmph.


	5. Chapter 5

Emma sat on the front steps of the house. It was large, and nice-looking, sitting in a row of other large, nice-looking houses in the part of town which had a lot of large nice-looking restaurants and grocery stores and malls.  
  
Unlike Ciara's house, which was merely your average degree of normal, this house was aggressively normal. The flowers planted in the flowerbed were nondescript in a way that seemed deliberate, the walls painted in a sort of dull grey-green that the eyes slid right off of, they even seemed to have picked the world’s least interesting font for the little address number by the door.  
  
In short, it was everything Emma had dreamed of. A normal house for a normal person. One who would talk to her like a normal human being, and let her get on with her most-certainly-not-a-quest.  
  
There was only one problem.  
  
She had rung the doorbell, and gotten no answer. She’d then knocked, and gotten no answer. She’d sent out a text, but she’d gotten no response. There was no car in the driveway, there were no lights on inside, nothing.  
  
There weren’t even any people on the street! This whole neighborhood gave Emma the willies. It was like she’d stepped straight into that one book where there was that place full of houses all the same, and then all the children would come out at exactly the same time, and they would all be playing the same games.  
  
Emma wished she knew what that book was called. She remembered hearing Taylor geek out to her about it until she finally wound up borrowing it from her just to find out what was so interesting about it.  
  
Taylor...  
  
A single car turned a corner a little ways off and began making its way down the road. It was as aggressively normal as the house: a sedan done up in that bog-standard default car silver.  
  
It parked in the driveway, and Emma rose to her feet. Finally, they were here. She’d been waiting for…well, she hadn’t exactly kept track, but it felt long. The doors opened, and a man and a woman stepped out.  
  
The man, who Emma suspected was Alan, had hair that was sporting streaks of grey, and was wearing a polo shirt and slacks. Looking him over, Emma could see what his wife was attracted to him for. Even in late middle age, he maintained a sort of gangly attractiveness.  
  
His eyes, though. He walked easily and calmly, but his eyes were a little too wide and darted around constantly. They locked onto her for a good two, maybe three seconds before dancing off after some other distraction.  
  
“Hey!” he called out. “Are you Emma?”  
  
"Yeah, that's me!"  
  
“Great! Sorry I’m late, Janey here wanted to stop by the grocery store for ‘important business’ which, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have bought into.” He punctuated his sentence with a gesture in the woman's direction.  
  
She gave an exaggerated sigh. "Oh come on, Alan, you enjoyed those pretzels just as much as I did."  
  
Alan chuckled, and grabbed a couple of bags from the trunk. “Unrelated to that, we’ve got refreshments now. So-honey, can you get the door, thanks-one moment to drop these in the kitchen and I’ll bring you to my study.”  
  
His wife stage-whispered conspiratorially at Emma. “He means man-cave.”  
  
“It has a fireplace, so it’s a study.”  
  
His wife rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I can take the bags, you take Emma here off to talk about your extremely worrying gaming habits and I’ll bring snacks in later.”  
  
Alan nudged Emma with an elbow. “Well, you heard the missus.”  
  
“And don’t call me that!”  
  
Emma gave him a light smile as she followed him inside. These people were pretty much the exact sort of thing she hoped they were. Mildly wealthy suburbanites who weren't going to bombard her with graph paper or weird truth-lies.  
  
Emma hoped she herself never ended up like them, though. Bickering over the same things ad infinitum in the land of endless picket fences. It was like death, but you still had to pay taxes.  
  
That was a morbid thought. Best ignore it and move on.  
  
“So, why do you say you have a study? I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard someone call a room in their house a study.”  
  
“Well, you know those old cheap sci-fi paperbacks? My dad always used to buy me those, and one of the things I really liked about them was that feeling that the author sat you down in his study and was telling the story to you.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Yeah, and it was always a study. So I said to myself that I was going to have a study too when I grew up so I would have a place to tell people stories. My wife thinks it’s silly, and it kind of is because I put a TV in there, but I still call it a study.”  
  
“Are you going to try and tell me a story about Skitter?”  
  
“That was the idea, although I’m no writer myself. Or, orator, I guess. Here we are.”  
  
The room Alan had led her to did sort of feel like a study. It had windows and a high ceiling, but the paint on the walls was a sort of muted cozy maroon that made the room seem a little smaller than it was. The fireplace was gas. Alan turned it on with a little remote on a shelf by the door. There was a TV above the fireplace, and some gaming consoles underneath. Bookshelves on the walls held everything from encyclopedias to DVDs. The center of the room was taken up by a pair of large squashy leather armchairs which were half-turned to face each other.  
  
Alan had a seat in one, and Emma took the other.  
  
“So, I don’t take it you know where Taylor lives? I’ve been trying to visit her, but…”  
  
“No, sorry, I don’t.”  
  
“Well, I guess you can just, I dunno, tell me your story? Might as well just get started, right?”  
  
Alan leaned back in his chair. "Right down to business, gotcha. Well, my story doesn't start with me in the Hive. It starts significantly before that..."  
  


* * *

  
It was somewhere around three in the morning when I made my way up to the grinding zone in Helheim. Long day at work with a long weekend hot on its heels that I didn't want to wait around for.  
  
I'd spent a lot of the night just milling about, searching for my character's name on the forums and finding thankfully little. Some folks live for that sort of notoriety, but not me. No, staying unknown is always a much simpler way to slide a knife into an unsuspecting player's back.  
  
There are people who say that their reputation is a much more useful tool than anonymity ever could be when it came to PvP. The more they know about you, though, the more they know what you can do. People are scared of the unknown far more than they are of the known, and once people know you you've lost that fear.  
  
Except for Taylor, of course. I'm sure you already know how different she was from the normal players making their way through the game.  
  
I considered myself an opportunist. I'd had the opportunity, for instance, to model myself a custom set of armor for my character. Now, I'm no professional 3D modeler, but as a hobbyist I doubt there's another man out there with a similar grasp of Maya. So the armor I wound up with, once it had passed through a couple game filters to make sure I wasn't some dirty-minded teen trying to push something I shouldn't, was a very unique set.  
  
Unique enough, in fact, that while I wasn't known about or talked about much of anywhere, people still knew of a sort of urban legend around it. That there was some player who dressed like a Mannequin that would cut you down and steal your gold if you weren't wise with your PvP-enabled grinding zones.  
  
Lacking any real information besides that I might be around, sure, but I will admit people do tend to get a little more scared when you show up after they've convinced themselves you don't exist.  
  
It was the one bit of reputation I allowed myself.  
  
Now, the grinding zone I was at was one of my favorite haunts. Dark, shadowy, swamp-themed. Useful to the ambitious players who wanted to raise their levels quick, often because they'd already had a taste of the upper tiers before getting booted back down with a death, but dangerous enough that large crowds tended to forego it in favor of a safer, more mindless place to raise their game.  
  
I made my way through the trees. I didn't have to worry about getting stuck in the bogs, or setting off any of the mobs. I'd done this a hundred times before. I knew just where to step, no line of sight, no sucking mobility traps.  
  
Someone was definitely here. I could see as I moved several of the usual mobs had vanished. When you spend as long as I did hunting other players from the shadows without spells, you learn other ways to track.  
  
The trees were simple enough to decipher. Little marks of scarred wood meant somebody had been casting spells in here. That was good. Spellcasters were easy prey. They never prepared for ambushes because they didn't want to waste mana on anything that wasn't killing mobs.  
  
It wasn't long before I caught sight of her. Dressed all in black chitin, brown hair flowing like a river in the light breeze. She was engrossed with fighting a simple, slow slime beast. I crept up behind her, like I always did. Carefully, knife-edged feet treading only where I wanted them to tread, avoiding the muck, making no sound.  
  
It was then that I stepped on a piece of webbing. That was certainly different. Stretched between two trees, nearly invisible. And yet, that was enough. The woman's head whipped around, and her eyes were on me before I could react. Well, a seasoned PvP veteran never lets the opponent have the first move, so I lunged for her then and there. I aimed for the eyes, of course. Disorienting her for even just a moment would be everything I needed to cut deep into her virtual flesh and send her reeling back down in level.  
  
It didn't happen. The woman was skilled, coordinated, and I was unprepared for a frontal assault. She managed to get a couple of spells cast, and I was forced to slink away in defeat before she found a way past my armor.  
  
I cursed her as I fled back through the swamp. I never let one get away. Never.  
  


\---------------

  
I saw her next in a hub town on Midgard, talking to a man dressed in blue platemail. She didn't come to Midgard often, but I had it on good authority that she was scouting out a dungeon for her guild. What better place to finally catch my quarry than on the road?  
  
She waved to the man and set out running. I had no trouble catching up. For all the buggy insanity it put my avatar through, having my run speed and agility pumped made so many parts of hunting so much easier. Fighting people on their travels was simple: a quick ambush and a couple seconds of surprise was more than enough to end even the most stalwart players.  
  
I moved along my usual path, along the branches of the roadside trees. Passing her took only a moment, and keeping pace until she had passed out of the town's range and into a PvP wilderness. I struck.  
  
I wound up passing straight through her. Bugs?  
  
It was only after being forced to flee once again that I realized what she had done. She'd gone invisible at some point and was moving with an insect clone at a distance to deter ambushes.  
  
I cursed again. The next time would be the one, for sure.  
  


* * *

  
The next time wasn't the one, actually. Or the next, or the next. She had a knack for showing up in places where I had been hunting for months and avoiding all of my usual tactics with grace and ease. It was infuriating.  
  
I had barely been hunting players at all in that time, instead spending more and more time trying to track her down. I spent my time thinking about which of my ambush locations would be the one to take her down.  
  
I actually wasn't eating much at all, or sleeping very well. My wife was concerned, bringing me meals at my computer, trying to figure out why I was spending all of my time home from work with my headset on, but how could I explain it to her?  
  
I needed to kill Skitter.  
  
At some point, it had become my drive. Instead of making new armors for myself, modeling new weapons or armor to show off to unsuspecting players, I was just going after her.  
  
But I couldn't do it. The more I tried, the more I unraveled. My attacks on her got uncoordinated, unsubtle. I would leap at her whenever she left a safe zone, whenever she went grinding, any time I could.  
  
But she wasn't the one getting harried. I was.  
  
Until, finally, she caught me. On purpose, a spider catching a fly. She wasn't even angry at me. I had been expecting anger, but I got mild annoyance. She brushed me off like I was nothing, and told me that she would start killing me if I showed my face around her again.  
  
I died several times, in the few weeks after that.  
  
But killing me was getting to her, it seemed. I could see how annoyed she was every time she had to stop and spike her staff through my skull.  
  
I didn't stop.  
  
I didn't stop for a long time, and she started yelling at me as she killed me. Incoherent things about how she could keep doing it no matter how long I tried to keep it up. That I was insane, that she didn't understand why I hated her so much. She screamed at me.  
  
It was a game, of sorts. An interesting one. I wasn't relying on old ambush locations anymore, I had started on more harebrained schemes dreamed up in fits of nightly wakefulness.  
  
I would drop at her from the sky, burrow out from under the earth, burst from an ent's chest. She became my Roadrunner at some point, and I couldn't stop no matter how often I found myself on the business end of an anvil.  
  
Finally, finally, she caught me again. This time, rather than kill me outright, she stormed up.  
  
"What. Do. You. Want."  
  
Her voice was angry, but there was a note of desperation in there. Like something I had been doing was getting to her in a way that was cutting, and personal. I found out later that she thought I was bullying her, that someone had managed to break into this life from her real life just to harass her.  
  
But right then, I didn't understand. I just understood that as much I was getting to her by doing this, I still wasn't winning. And fun though are little game had become, I was surprisingly miserable doing it. I was spending too much time chasing her, and I was no closer to beating her or figuring out what it was she did that made her so effective.  
  
So I told her I wanted to join her guild.  
  
Oddly enough, I meant it, too. Fun though hunting was, routine got so stale after a while.  
  
I had been looping between work, play, and sleep almost like clockwork, but now the play was varied, and fun.  
  
I wanted more.  
  
And I got it! There were trials, of sorts, and tests and the like, but I eventually got signed up as that weird psycho 3D modeling guy, and while I don't think Skitter ever really liked me after I had hounded her for so long, she at least appreciated the work I could do for her.  
  


* * *

  
"And, what can I say, it was fun being in her guild! It's really too bad you couldn't have seen it."  
  
Emma blinked.  
  
"So, wait, you hunted Taylor? For months?"  
  
Alan nodded. "Yeah. It was a rush. I wouldn't do it again, of course. It was really upsetting for her. But I enjoyed it, at least."  
  
"Really upsetting? Are you kidding? I can't believe she let you join after you did something like that!"  
  
Alan shrugged. "Well, I never did manage to kill her. In the end, I was never much more than a nuisance."  
  
"B-b-but-"  
  
"And say what you will about Taylor, she's pragmatic. She saw that I'd made the armor myself, and she couldn't say no to having that kind of skill on her side!" Alan puffed out his chest exaggeratedly, then chuckled. "To be honest, they just needed anyone who was decent at it. They were itching to decorate that guildhall they'd just gotten."  
  
Emma spluttered a bit, ineffectually. Here was a guy who just cheerfully talked about chasing Taylor down with knives for months, and treating it like it was no big deal! Taylor had probably been terrified!  
  
But Alan just stood up and stretched, looking for all the world like a normal guy who didn't find months of hunting a girl down fun.  
  
"You staying for dinner?"  
  
It _would_ be rude to not stay for dinner.


End file.
